The Eurozone crisis and the European Parliament's changing lines of conflict

Abstract

There is a broad consensus that the left-right dimension has been the dominant line of conflict in the European Parliament since 1979. A pro-/anti-EU dimension is found to be of secondary importance, which is attributed to the fact that decision-making over the competences of the European Union is the realm of intergovernmental negotiations. In this article, we show that the seventh EP witnessed a transformational moment in the history of the EU. The Eurozone crisis amplified the importance of the pro-/anti-EU dimension and increasingly shapes the voting behaviour of Members of the EP. This change is particularly pronounced for voting on economic issues. To demonstrate this transformation, we employ a novel deductive method that allows us to predict the relative importance of two dimensions structuring MEP voting behaviour. Our results contradict established wisdom about the strength of the left-right divide in EP politics.

MEP Responses to Democratic Backsliding in Hungary and Poland. An Analysis of Agenda‐Setting and Voting Behaviour

“…In line with recent research, we analyse roll‐call votes using logistic regression analysis, in which individual vote decisions by legislators are used as the dependent variables and quantities of interests as the independent variables, such as party (group) affiliation and ideological positions (Otjes and van der Veer, ; Roger et al ., ). Using this method, we select a small number of votes on which we regress the voting decisions of individual legislators as a function of ideological and party group affiliation.…”

“…More specifically, our first hypothesis relates to intra-party group ideological convictions as an important factor. Previous research has shown that MEPs and party groups in the EP mainly compete along two ideological axes: a left-right dimension and a European integration dimension (Hix et al, 2007; see also Otjes and van der Veer, 2016). The left-right dimension encompasses not only the positions of parties and legislators on economic issues (that is, state-based versus market-based solutions to economic management), but also includes cultural components.…”

Liberty: Security dilemmas and party cohesion in the European Parliament

“…The Hix–Lord two‐dimensional model of EU politics maintains that the left–right and the pro and anti‐EU dimensions structure political competition in the EP (Marks and Steenbergen, ). This model has indeed received much more empirical support than its alternatives (Otjes and van Der Veer, ). In the specific case of security policies, we argue that national parties’ position on the European dimension is bound to matter greatly for whether the MEPs support an EU‐coordinated extension of surveillance or not.…”

Does politics drive conflict in central banks’ committees? Lifting the veil on the European Central Bank consensus

“…Much literature suggests that a left/right dimension and a pro-/anti-EU dimension account for the bulk of political conflict among members of the EP (Kreppel and Tsebelis, 1999; Noury, 2002) and EU Council (Mattila, 2004; Mattila and Lane, 2001). While significant scholarly consensus exists on the dominance of the left–right dimension in the EP (Hix and Noury, 2009; Hix et al., 2006; but see Otjes and Veer, 2016), the relative influence of the left/right dimension on the political conflicts that play out in the EU Council is less clear cut (e.g. Aspinwall, 2007, Mattila, 2004).…”